


we’ll make ‘em turn their heads

by nothingunrealistic



Category: Love in Hate Nation - Iconis
Genre: F/F, Inspired by Music, if the drum pattern that opens "be my baby" thrills your soul this is the fic for you, spoilers for the entire show but especially act 2, thanks joe iconis and charlie rosen for my life, to paraphrase the only decent part of the nyt review:
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-27
Updated: 2020-04-16
Packaged: 2021-02-26 02:40:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,583
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21586252
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nothingunrealistic/pseuds/nothingunrealistic
Summary: In the fall of 1962, the National Reformatory for Girls burns to the ground, and Susannah and Sheila have to go their separate ways to safely escape.In the summer of 1963, the Ronettes release what will become their most famous song, and Susannah and Sheila discover a connection they would have never expected.
Relationships: Sheila Nail/Susannah Son
Comments: 25
Kudos: 32





	1. side a

**Author's Note:**

> If you've never heard [Be My Baby by the Ronettes](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZV5tgZlTEkQ) before, I'd recommend listening to it before or while reading this, because it's pretty crucial to the story. If you have heard it before, I'd recommend listening to it anyway, because it's just a really great song and half the reason this fic even exists.

When Susannah had gathered the girls around her in the crumbling dormitory at Nation to take them through the first part of Operation: Sha La La, she’d never considered, but found out fast enough, that the plan would need a part three with nine steps total, as follows:

  1. Stand there in front of the growing pile of ashes that used to be Nation with the girls around her, watching the taillights on Francis’s motorcycle vanish in the sunset, until the police arrived.
  2. Reassure the officer who spoke to them first that this building used to be a monument to hatred and pain that they couldn’t let stand, and he’d find proof of that if he and his men dug through the rubble to find a smoke-stained ECT machine and a singed, triple-sealed folder containing the files on Harriet Asp.
  3. Get arrested, along with Kitty, Judith, and Rat, because Ya-Ya had taken off running as soon as the officer mentioned that this was a clear-cut case of arson, Dorothy had chased after her, and no one had wanted to take the time to follow them.
  4. Spend twelve hours in the police station, two of which were devoted to retelling all the horrors of Nation to a dubious officer and a bored stenographer, before being released into the custody of her parents. (She left there before the other three girls, and still doesn’t know what happened to them.)
  5. Get into an argument with her father on the ride home that lasted all the way through the front door, because she was in juvie less than three weeks and is already back because the goddamned building burned down, and Francis came by the house two weeks ago to ask for her hand in marriage and a week ago to announce he was going to Mexico, where she clearly isn’t, and for Christ’s sake, have you lost your mind completely, are you even the same person any more, Susie, are you even our daughter?
  6. Go up to her bedroom, pack what remained of her things and all the money she could find in two suitcases and a purse, and walk out of the house.
  7. Walk three blocks to the train station, wait there until the New Haven line to Manhattan arrived, the one she’d taken a few times to see Francis at Columbia, and get on.
  8. Spend the entire hour on the train wondering if she really had lost her mind and struggling not to stutter through a reply every time another rider said hello. 
  9. Arrive in Harlem at the station on 125th Street and drag her luggage up the stairs without any help, emerging at street level to squint in the morning sunlight and decide what on earth to do now.



Susannah had stood there for a few minutes, then picked up her bags and started walking downtown with no goal in mind but to find something to care about. That something turned out to be a record store near the Village, which took nearly three hours to reach on foot, with a HELP WANTED sign in the window and an owner so impressed by her listing off the Marvelettes’ last five singles without hesitating that he’d offered her a job and a tip on where to find a cheap apartment right off.

That was in October. It’s August now, she still works at that store, and lately every news story out of Washington or Mississippi or Alabama seems to scream that the world is ending, or else starting completely anew. But the most earth-shaking thing happening on this block of Manhattan today is the delivery of a crate full of 45s of the Ronettes’ new single. 

Henry, who works the cash register on weekends when he’s not busy with his classes at NYU, announces the arrival of the crate with just his head poking through the door. “Help me bring this in, Susie, it’s terrifically heavy.” 

“Sure,” Susannah says, setting down a pile of Ella Fitzgerald records she’d been sorting. “And it’s still Susannah.” 

They maneuver it in through the door, propped open with a discarded brick, and lower it to the floor beside the checkout counter. Henry digs around under the counter until he finds a claw hammer, immediately setting to work at prising the crate open. It’s morning still, early enough that no customers are there browsing the shelves to be bothered by the lid finally coming free and crashing to the floor with a clatter that makes Susannah wince. 

“Oh, sorry,” Henry says. “I should have put down a cushion or something, huh?”

Susannah sighs. “Let’s just get these on the shelves and sorted.”

“Well, we’ve got to listen to them first, don’t we?” Henry picks a single record from the crate and takes it out of the sleeve, the red-and-yellow label blazing like a sunset. “Have to know what we’re selling when we’ve got this many to sell.”

He’s got a point. And she’d be lying if she said she didn’t care to hear the song. “I won’t be paying if it gets scratched.” 

“Wouldn’t dream of making you, Susie.” Henry strides over to the record player placed proudly in the middle of the store for exactly that reason and starts fumbling with it. Susannah’s caught up to him just as he gets the turntable spinning; she’s leaning on the table with both hands when he drops the needle.

_Boom, boom-boom, tsh._

Susannah claps both hands to her mouth.

 _Boom, boom-boom, tsh,_ the drums insist, repeating again and again even as a symphony of castanets and strings and voices bursts to life, trying and failing to drown the rhythm out. She’d recognize that beat anywhere, tapped out on the floor of Nation with a chipped mug or rattling in her rib cage or echoing back to her through rusting pipes, sooner than her own pulse — or is it the very same rhythm? And how did it get onto this record in this dusty store?

The drumbeat shifts, to something unfamiliar and forgettable, just as the chorus begins, and for the first time Susannah hears the words. _So won’t you please,_ Ronnie Bennett wails, clear and unmistakable, and a choir chimes in to say what she can’t, _be my, be my baby…_ How many times had she wanted to ask the same in just a few short weeks? _My one and only baby, say you’ll be my darling…_ Could ten thousand volts across her brain be anywhere near as electrifying?

“Sounds great,” Henry says. Susannah could scream at him for talking over the song. “Phil Spector is just, the man’s a genius. …Are you all right?”

“What?” Susannah realizes that she’s talking through her hands, and carefully lowers them to her sides. She must look as rattled as she feels. “Yes, I’m… it’s very good. I’m fine.”

Henry looks dubious but doesn’t ask again, just shoves his hands in his pockets and watches the record spin. Susannah clasps her own behind her back, squeezing tight, trying to release the hectic energy coursing between her head and her heart where no one can see.

Abruptly, everything else drops out. Only the drums play, demanding to be heard. 

_Boom, boom-boom, tsh. Boom, boom-boom, tsh._

The chorus bursts forth one final time, repeating _be my, be my baby, my one and only baby…_ even as it fades into silence. Then the crackle of the vinyl is the only sound in the store. 

Susannah stands there, aflame, staring at the record, until Henry lifts the tone arm out of the way and flips it over to play the B-side, some jaunty, meaningless instrumental track. And a customer pushes in through the door, then two more, choosing to trust the taped-on schedule that says they opened five minutes ago over the sign hanging above it that’s still flipped to CLOSED, so Susannah has to drag herself back to this time and place and start the workday with a smile. 

All that day, she finds herself tapping out the rhythm whenever her mind drifts, _doo, da-doo, dah_ on the floor with her shoe or against her hip with one hand, while restocking shelves or resorting misplaced records. She hums the melody, or mumbles what she remembers of the words under her breath, when she isn’t helping customers or gritting her teeth as they go to ask Henry the same questions she’d just answered for them. The song revolves around and around in her head, stuck like a needle in a locked groove. It won’t leave her.

When her shift finally ends, she picks up one of the records, now placed neatly beside their Crystals collection, and carries it to the counter, to a surprised look from Henry. “You want to buy that?” 

“Yes.”

“You could just play it in the store whenever you like, you know. It’s one of the perks of working here.”

“I know.” It’s a perk Henry takes advantage of often, and often obnoxiously. “But I want to have it for myself.”

Henry shrugs and punches the numbers into the cash register. “That’s ninety cents with your employee discount.”

Susannah hands over the money, taking the record back in return, and is out the door at once. Most days, she likes to take her time walking back to her apartment, just to soak in the sight of the city and remind herself that this is real, that she made it out, that she’s still making it. Today, though, the three blocks and two flights of stairs between here and there fly by. 

She’s barely locked the apartment door behind her before tugging off her shoes and sitting down on her bed. The apartment is small and dim, with paint peeling from the walls, but it’s hers alone, and a mile better than Nation. Her record player, which she’d lugged here from Connecticut in one of those suitcases nestled alongside her record collection and padded with dresses she hasn’t worn in years, sits near her pillow, on a rickety end table she picked up from the sidewalk last November. 

With trembling hands, she slides the record from its sleeve. The label is stark and simple — THE RONETTES, BE MY BABY, a few names. Time: 2:20. Flipping it over reveals the title of the B-side, TEDESCO AND PITMAN, and little else. The drummer’s name is nowhere to be found. 

_Are you like me?_ Susannah wonders. _Trying to say something to someone that you can’t speak in words? Are you talking in code, too?_

And why did they bother listing the Ronettes on that side of the record? There’s not a word being sung. It’s misleading, plain and simple.

 _Our very own one-woman Ronette,_ Kitty had called her. Kitty, who’d taught her to smoke and told her about ocelots and stood up for her when no one else would, or could. Of all the girls, Susannah misses her the most, other than — well. That’s obvious.

Sheila, who had called her _Susannah_ from the start, and _partner,_ and _baby._

She turns the record back over, sets it on the turntable, turns it on, lowers the needle, and waits.

 _Boom, boom-boom, tsh. Boom, boom-boom, tsh._ The drumbeat still sends a jolt up her spine, but this time she’s ready for it. What she isn’t prepared for is the verses, now that she can hear them.

 _The night we met I knew I needed you so,_ Ronnie sings, plain, simple. _And if I had the chance, I’d never let you go…_ Susannah blinks, tears welling in her eyes. _So won’t you say you love me? I’ll make you so proud of me, we’ll make ‘em turn their heads every place we go…_

She imagines it. Walking through the streets of the Village with Sheila, shoulder to shoulder, or even hand in hand if they were feeling brave. Passing by other couples like them, old or young, and wide-eyed children who’d watch them to the end of the block, realizing _there’s another way, there’s a different picture of what a life can be._ Squeezing into this tiny apartment together, huddling close when the winter chill seeps through the thin walls and knocking elbows when they cook dinner. Playing her songs for Sheila, without caring who might hear. 

A sob rises in her throat, choking her, like stuttering on silence.

The song continues on, unhesitant. _Oh, since the day I saw you, I have been waiting for you, you know I will adore you ‘til eternity, so won’t you, please…_

She’d thought that maybe now, after almost a year apart, it wouldn’t hurt quite so much to think of how far away Sheila must be, that the nagging sting wouldn’t be so keen or so terrible. That she’d have fallen out of love. But she’s just as far gone for Sheila as she was the day they met, the day they parted, and every moment in between. 

And she’s wishing just as desperately that their paths will cross again someday, somehow, and that Sheila will still feel the way she feels here and now.

The tone arm bobs at the center of the silently spinning record, on the edge of her vision — the song must have finished while she was too lost in thought to notice. Susannah lifts the needle and sets it on the outermost groove of the record again, and she hopes.

_Boom, boom-boom, tsh. Boom, boom-boom, tsh._


	2. side b

In all the excitement of being busted from solitary after endless hours of boredom and dread and bitterness, of tackling Asp to the ground and watching Nation crumble and burn, of finally telling Susannah how she felt and finishing what they’d started in Asp’s office, Sheila never once considered that riding through the entire country on a motorcycle three inches behind Susannah’s old steady might make her want to throw herself  _ off _ the motorcycle and just accept whatever came next.

Francis was fucking insufferable. It must have been that no one ever told him silence is golden, considering how he wouldn’t shut it the entire time they were on the highways or stopping for gas or looking for motels that’d believe they were brother and sister so he wouldn’t have to pay for two rooms. He spent hundreds of miles rambling on about the commune he was heading to and his SFDS brothers back in New York who’d be just sick with envy when he sent them a postcard from Mexico. He called her “woefully ignorant” for not knowing Allen Ginsberg from Jack Kerouac, and then acted all shocked when she said she knew Jack Kennedy was the president. He couldn’t pick between lamenting how Sheila must have suffered under the patriarchal society they all lived in and calling her a violent layabout who deserved each and every year she spent in Nation. Sheila can’t imagine how Susannah put up with him for so long, because trying to think about it makes her chest get real tight and her heart crack a little.

It took them twenty-five days from leaving Nation to arrive in the very tip of Texas, right on the border in Brownsville. Francis had pulled up to the foot of a huge bridge, the Rio Grande rolling by below, and braked hard. 

“You can walk across,” he’d told her. “At least I’ll be able to say I didn’t take a criminal across an international border.”

“Well, thank God for that,” Sheila had sneered, sliding off the back of the bike. “Wouldn’t wanna ruin your reputation at the commune.”

She’d walked away from Francis and onto the bridge without looking back, not even to dangle that engagement ring in front of his face before running off with it for good like she’d thought about doing a hundred times.

It hadn’t felt real at first, crossing that bridge. For one thing, she hadn’t figured leaving the country would be so easy as crossing the street — but no one bothered to ask for identification, just a ten-cent fee she paid with change she’d swiped from Francis on the road, and a dozen other people were walking across both ways, as casual as stepping out to pick up the Sunday paper. _ The first successful escape attempt of Sheila Nail, _ Sheila had thought, absurdly, and laughed, winning a few funny looks from the pedestrians going the other way. Or maybe they were staring at her leather jacket and thinking she must have been cracked in the head for wearing that in October in Mexico, did she want to boil to death?

(It was, admittedly, sweltering.)

And that had been the other thing — Sheila had thought she’d stick out like a whole sore hand here, that someone would look at her once and know she was a delinquent on the run who’d never even left Connecticut before, and who was going to do the right thing and lock her back up before she fumbled her way into Mexico? 

No one, was the answer, seeing as she’d stepped off that bridge and into the town of Matamoros untouched by so much as a “hey, you!” (Even figuring out the name of the place turned out easier than she’d thought — she barely spoke three words of Spanish when she showed up there, let alone reading it, but half the signs were in English and Spanish both.)

Matamoros is a cotton town. Farms, mostly, but factories, too, and warehouses that hold it all before it gets shipped clear across the ocean. New cars and old buildings line the streets downtown, where she’d wandered for a while that first day, getting even more confused looks now that it was plain to see she was out of place, until she’d happened upon a bar with a name and a Help Wanted sign both in English and poked her head in. Two names, actually — Texas Bar and Nick’s Place, though the guy who’d only needed a minute’s talk to give her the job and toss her an apron was called Marcelino. Officially, she brings out drinks to customers and takes empty glasses back to the kitchen; unofficially, she’s also been washing those glasses, wiping down tables, and chopping onions and peppers when it’s busy since her first week. If Asp could see her here — Sheila Nail, cleaning dishes, cooking dinners, and serving men drinks, by choice — she wouldn’t believe her eyes.

Her birthday’s come and gone, an early spring day hotter than any had ever passed in Connecticut. She didn’t tell a soul except Eliseo, a waiter there about her age and the kind of nice guy she might have liked to go on one date with back when she thought of guys that way. He’d slipped her a smile, and later a dessert from the kitchen that someone had sent back after one forkful, and that had been the most exciting thing about turning eighteen. No newfound freedom; no one pounding down the creaky door of the house where she rents a room to haul her away. Nothing comes along to shake up her world until one night in December, when the grill cook, Anselmo, walks into the kitchen with —

“A radio?” Maximiliano looks up from his cutting board just long enough to see the thing. He told Sheila on her second day that he’s worked here longer than she’s been alive; she doesn’t doubt it. “You gonna hold that to your head while you’re making the filet mignon?”

“Won’t need to.” Anselmo sets the radio, gleaming black and gold, on an empty tabletop near the grill and gets to flipping through the manual. “This is top of the line. The speakers are good enough that we’ll all be able to listen.”

Sheila whistles. “Didn’t know you could get that rich off of this job.”

“A radio’s not that impressive,” Eliseo says from behind Sheila, plates clattering in his arms. “My father, back in the fifties, he bought a truck every year with the money he made from cotton. He’d walk into the dealership with a bag full of cash, and he’d leave in the new truck.” He sets the dishes down by the sink. “That’s what being rich is.”

Maximiliano snorts. “No, it isn’t. The Americans who came down here during Prohibition, filling up the bars and running them too and treating the whole town like their vacation home, they were rich. Too much money to care what they did with it.”

“Don’t stop there,” Anselmo calls from the grill station. “Tell us what it was like when the Americans all came here during their civil war, too.”

“I’ll tell you something,” Maximiliano says, setting down his knife. “Fuck you, do I look a hundred?” The kitchen rings with laughter. Anselmo doesn’t take his eyes off the radio; he’s turning the knobs now, blasting a dozen kinds of static and pieces of songs.

Eliseo walks over closer. “Turn it to 1570. XERF.”

“Sure,” Anselmo says, twisting the dial. The static wavers and settles into a raspy, rambling voice.

“…lay back with me and squeeze my knobs, we’re gonna feel it tonight,” growls the voice, in English, before baying like a werewolf in some corny movie. “This is Wolfman Jack down here…”

“Weird,” Sheila mutters. “Eliseo, you really listen to this? On purpose?”

He shrugs. “I like the music he chooses.”

No one else complains about the choice of radio station. They carry on shouting orders and assembling dinners while the Wolfman howls and hollers about baby chicks and something called Florex between doo-wop numbers. Sheila’s got a pile of dishes to dry and put away that reaches nearly above her head, and that’s stealing most of her attention when the Wolfman announces, “Okay, ladies, I got a record for you, and you’re gonna love it to death, just take a listen…”

_ Boom, boom-boom, tsh. _

Sheila nearly drops the glass she’s drying.

_ Boom, boom-boom, tsh. _

She knows that rhythm. She heard it day and night for a week, in clanging metal, and for months after in her dreams. Why the hell’s it on the radio?

Someone starts singing, a voice she’s never heard before that somehow sounds an awful lot like the one in her head. _The night we met I knew I needed you so! And if I had the chance I’d never let you go! So won’t you say you love me? I’ll make you so proud of me! We’ll make ‘em turn their heads every place we go!_ _So won’t you please…_ No nonsense syllables here: she’s saying just what she means. And under it all, _boom, boom-boom, tsh_.

She’d feel less exposed if the deejay were snarling out her full name and address, and only half as thunderstruck. Surely Francis slipped some of that mescaline stuff into her food at one of those crummy diners they ate in on the road, and it’s only taking effect now, making her hear  _ doo, da-doo, dah _ where there’s nothing at all. Or the sound is the real thing, and this whole year has been one long hallucination that reality — in the form of shitty plumbing — is finally intruding on. It’s a more likely story than being broken out of solitary and whisked away to Mexico by the love of her life’s ex-boyfriend as Nation burned to the ground, with smoke in her throat and cold sweat running down her back —

“Sheila?” She nearly throws an elbow at the source of the sound before realizing it’s Eliseo, standing at her shoulder and frowning. “Are you feeling okay?”

Is she? Sheila takes stock of herself. The glass is still in her hand, but the towel she’d been drying it with is on the floor. Anselmo’s hovering over the radio like he’s afraid she’ll leap up and smash it to pieces. And her heart’s pounding something fierce.

Instead of answering, she asks, “You heard this song before?” and grabs the towel off the floor. Eliseo tilts his head to listen over the clanking and chatter.

“Maybe?” So it’s not just in her head — maybe. “I think it’s new.”

“Huh.” Eliseo’s still looking at her, though Anselmo’s gone back to the grill. “I’m  _ fine.” _

“If you’re sure,” he says, and distantly, she hears  _ boom, boom-boom, tsh _ twice. 

They don’t talk for the rest of that shift. Sheila keeps drying dishes without hearing a thing else from the radio, and when the kitchen crew has cleaned up and closed down, well past midnight, she’s out the door without a goodbye. 

It’s dark, clouds covering the stars, and just cold enough to make Sheila glad for her jacket. The main plaza downtown is empty and silent; no one in the gazebo, though all the lampposts around it are lit up, and no water flowing from the fountain. Sheila sits down on the fountain’s edge and looks around — still no one in sight — before reaching into her pocket, running her fingers along the inner seams until they find a sliver of cool metal, and pulling out Susannah’s engagement ring.

The ring is ugly as sin. The diamond’s clunky and dull, and surrounded by little pink stones that hurt just to look at. Either Grandpa Alcott was a cheap bastard, or he picked out a ring from the case at Tiffany’s with his eyes shut and his ears plugged.

But she still has it.

Susannah had insisted she sell the ring, and Sheila had promised to do it. She’d kept telling herself that any day now, she was going to sell it at one of the pawn shops nearby and get the money for a train ticket to somewhere bigger and better, as soon as her Spanish was good enough to haggle, or she could manage a day away from the bar to get rid of the damn thing and look up train schedules, or…

But she’s been here for over a year, and picked up enough Spanish to keep up with the kitchen, and had plenty of mornings and Sundays free, and that ring still lives in her pocket. She doesn’t like jewelry, even nice jewelry, but once every few weeks, when she can’t sleep and the moon’s bright in her window, she’ll take it out and slide it onto her finger and look at it in the light. She doesn’t like the thought that it used to belong to Francis, but Susannah gave it to her, Susannah  _ chose _ her, and sometimes she dreams she could keep it and wear it so everyone else would know that too.

She doesn’t like marriage, but she thinks she might marry Susannah if it weren’t impossible for every reason, the thousands of miles between them being just one.

The fountain is all cement and tile; it chills Sheila through her clothes when she lies down on its edge, left knee bent, right leg dangling. She puts on the ring, watches it sparkle in the streetlamps.

_ Oh, since the day I saw you, I have been waiting for you! You know I will adore you ‘til eternity... _

She misses Susannah like she’d miss her leather jacket or her left arm — a piece of herself, gone. For the longest time, she’s thought this hideous, priceless ring was all she had left of her girl. But it’s clear now, Susannah is everywhere, in everything Sheila sees and hears, and getting rid of one dinky piece of jewelry won’t change that. She won’t let it.

Sheila lays her hand on her chest, over her heart, and under her fingers she can feel that drumbeat rattling through her.

_ Boom, boom-boom, tsh. Boom, boom-boom, tsh. _

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! You can find me on Tumblr @nothingunrealistic.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [[Podfic of] we’ll make ‘em turn their heads](https://archiveofourown.org/works/28923603) by [klb](https://archiveofourown.org/users/klb/pseuds/klb)




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